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  • Essay / The growing problem of student boredom and ways to solve it

    Table of contentsWhat caused the boredomDo we really have a military state education systemDo children really not left behindDataMoney = InequalityOnline SchoolWhen it comes to education in America today, what schools and school boards care most about are test scores and grades. This is a huge problem because students get bored with learning and lose interest in it all. “We could encourage the best qualities of youth - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight - simply by being more flexible with schedules, texts and tests, by introducing children to truly competent adults and giving each student the autonomy they need. he or she needs to take risks from time to time” (Gatto 115). The only way to correct this new problem of boredom is to erase everything that is in place in the education system and start from scratch. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay What Caused Boredom “Our policymakers today think that what matters most is scoring high on math and reading tests” (Ravitch 106). This has led students themselves to believe that grades and test scores are the only thing that matters. In all reality tests, students measure memorization skills and not the examinee's intelligence, which is something students have forgotten. No test can ever measure their potential to become something great. John Taylor Gatto, a retired teacher, said boredom was everywhere in his teaching world (114). When asked, students responded that they were bored because “the work was stupid, it made no sense, they already knew it” (Gatto 114). The teachers are bored because the students “are only interested in grades” (Gatto 114). This boredom comes from the fact that most schools have become a means of equalizing a large number of citizens. Do we really have a state military education system? Schools began to become compulsory between the years 1905 and 1915 for three reasons: to make good citizens, to make good people, and to make each person their personal best (Gatto 117). This doesn't seem like a big deal, but many people like HL Mencken and Christopher Lasch have studied the origin of our education system and what it really means. The reality is that our educational system is derived from the military state of Prussia (Gatto 117). The Prussians used schools to create an easily manageable population by "creating mediocre intellects, crippling the inner life, denying students appreciable leadership skills, and ensuring docile and incomplete citizens" (Gatto 118). Alexander Inglis, an author from the early 1900s, wrote about the six true fundamental functions of the American school: the adaptive function, the integrative function, the diagnostic and directive function, the differentiating function, the selective function, and the propaedeutic (Gatto 119). These functions "establish fixed habits of response to authority", "determine the appropriate social role of each student", "classify children by role" and teach them accordingly, "mark the unfit clearly enough for their peers to accepted as inferior” and teach a very small portion of children to become leaders (Gatto 119). The Prussian education system created a harmless population of voters, a.